What the Dickens happened there, Eoin? ;) In all seriousness, the opposing team were on fire, credit to them for a top-notch performance. They even got all the bonuses on Northern Ireland, so no complaints there! Didn't they miss the Armagh one? But yeah, unlucky lads. Even though it did make me sa...

Surprised no posts about Haemangioma being on the show last week, just catching up! The intro mentioned our Rach as an alumna of Oriel College, Oxford as well. Not quite a quattrocento but 150 is a decent score and nice to see Eoin smiling and enjoying the experience as well :). Thanks, Adam! Hope ...

Watched this episode in my college's JCR and by the end of it we had a whopping 4 members of the audience. Great episode and you two were totally inseparable, great to watch. Congrats to Dylan and commiserations to Giles. Interestingly, someone walked in, saw the TV and said "Oh, it's Giles, I went ...

Great to see an all-Irish semi-final! These semi-finals have been the first episodes I've watched in a long while but were really good viewing. Congrats to Dan and Antoinette, and commiserations/ congratulations to George and Laurence.

http://rhysbenjamin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/why-liverpool-would-be-mad-to-reject.html And to answer Jono's point from 7 months ago, he now plays for Wimbledon, and his name is Will Mannion. Also, one of my teachers, Robert Rice, plays for Basingstoke. I started with René Meulensteen. Unquestionably ...

The biggest party getting almost a quarter fewer seats than the next biggest, still seems a little odd, even allowing for the transferring procedure. However, the most shocking statistic was the poor turnout, just under 52%, maybe it's time to "bribe" people to vote, say £10 worth of scratch cards!...

As much as Countdown is a words and numbers game - in fact more so a letters game - it seems that all the top players are more mathematically inclined. I guess this is because they have more of an analytic mind, and spotting the words is all about spotting patterns, so it kind of makes sense there. ...

I think due to changes in filming procedure by the time of 30th BC, Eoin wasn't allowed to film unless he'd taken his GCSEs? I've heard it was something convoluted like that, anyway. I don't doubt he would've been invited if not for rules like that. Yeah that's correct. Due to not having taken GCSE...

Looking back through Mike's excellent notes (which I bookmarked!) for COC10, the byes weren't randomly decided. I think, looking back through the wiki, the byes were for the unbeaten players, Kate Ogilvie and Scott Mearns. The other four players had all lost - Simon Cooper in the Grand Final, Teren...

3. Rhys - your lists don't make sense. Surely byes would be randomly decided (how did you calculate the top 2 seeds for the first list anyway?). Also not sure why you'd have Adam in there over Ed in your second list (surely series winner trumps runner-up?), or invite Heather to a seven-episode CoC ...

If that's the case, why therefore would those not invited to the 30th BC now be considered candidates for a future CoC? I think due to changes in filming procedure by the time of 30th BC, Eoin wasn't allowed to film unless he'd taken his GCSEs? I've heard it was something convoluted like that, anyw...

I'd be inclined to draw mostly from S67 onwards, to make sure as many as possible of the great contestants since then get to be included, but also be open to a few particular contestants from S60-S66 who would have been likely candidates to be invited to a CoC but didn't take part in the 30BC for w...

Incredible final lads, barring the 30BC games, I don't think I've ever been as nervous/ excited for a game of Countdown in a long time! It must be said that Dylan has been exceptional throughout his run, dropping next to nothing throughout, and today the standard was just as superb. If you've got an...

Another max-conundrum? Nope, I make that a 12 maxer going by conundrum, PRIMULA and Jack's DC beater. Great standard today, very unlucky to Bradley who kept up with Dylan for more or less the whole show, great to see him come back after so many years and perform so well! Well played also to Dylan, ...

MATE, that was too soon. LOTS too soon. Is this a spoiler? Well played Dylan and unlucky on the max. Commiserations to Gemma as well! No spoiler. Just a shit joke. And you're right; let's not drag too much attention away from Gemma. She did brilliantly, and I hope Nick's wish to see her again will ...

Yes Eoin, they were in our filming block for the second round, so we saw them at the hotel and had a chat Ah thought you might have! My mum's friend's son is on the Queen's team, and mentioned to her that there was a Countdown octochamp filming, so I was scratching my head trying to work out who it...

Not just relevant to Countdown, but one thing I made sure I did when trying to get good at something was hang out with people who were good at it. You've done that already by being here. I found that chatting to, playing against (getting hammered by!) and simply watching/ copying the best from here ...

I've just started AS English Literature and had my copy of a play on the table, it was taken by someone so I grabbed the closest one, opened it up to find that the original owner was none other than Edward McCullagh!

Ian Volante wrote:Ian Volante...
• played Amey Deshpande in Series 56...
• ... who played Andrew Hulme in the semi-finals of the Junior Championship...
• ... who played Chris Davies in the final of Series 61...
• ... who played Kirk Bevins in a special episode.

Commiserations to Zarte who I thought was entertaining, shame that the luck of draw saw you knocked off sure octochampdom, but I really hope 5 wins will see you back for what could be an epic quarter-final.

(10 to go Ryan, you've missed Kevin Bacon (again) off the bottom) All looking good so far, you've even found a couple of connecting movies I hadn't initially thought of. :-) I'll happily do another (slightly better-researched) one of these if there's demand for it. The one I'm surprised is eluding ...

Really tense, super final guys - great to watch! Congrats to Giles who is undoubtedly a worthy and fantastic champion, your word knowledge is second to none! And congrats also to Andy (hey, the coolest people are always runners-up :D ) Roll on the next series! #TeamJen WELL FUCK YOU VERY MUCH! (I w...